WHY CHILDREN KEEP TROUBLING SECRETS FROM THEIR PARENTS

I saw a statement that goes like this online:

“Over strictness is what makes your kids hide to do things. They get raped and you don’t know, they do abortion and you don’t know, they have their first kiss and you don’t know, they go through violence from their partner and you don’t know…all you know is morning devotion”

Admin:

On the “reasons why children keep very personal but troubling secrets from their parents” this was circulated online and many here might have seen it. I want you to carefully read it, and make comments on its correctness or otherwise.

• Group Admin, 3pG.

Admin response:

Statements like this sound very nice and convincing, and they are, in their own right but it is also impregnated with spiritual toxics, lies and doubts if swallowed without a critical second look. Whoever wrote this, mentioned all the problems but no single solution or way out was suggested but made a veil rebuke on effectiveness of morning devotion and cast a silent doubt on the good efforts of Christian parents who are taking spiritual responsibility and trying to enforce spiritual rules at home.

The devil have his ways, cunny ways of rebuking, discouraging and casting doubts on Christian parents with the aim of stopping, creating doubt or render useless spiritual education at home through well structured statements like this online. We must be careful of what we see and what we read online and how we response to them.

Strictness to morning devotion and family prayer times can never be over much and it can never be the reason for lack of trust and secrecy from children to parents. This is a technical and carefully crafted statement capable of watering down the importance of morning devotion and family prayer times in the heart of those given to it as a Christian parenting method.

Showing your children the way of prayers and having a zero tolerance for absentism during morning devotion can never be the reason for failure in parenting and distrust between a child and the parents.

Yes, I must say blind commitment to church and church programs at the expense of family time, blind commitment to work and career, meetings and social organizations, parties and clubs, smartphone and social media, insensitivity to the children body language, insensitivity to spiritual things, ignorance, unabated commitment to money making and business opportunities, avoidable domestic wars and unnecessary monitoring of one’s spouse, regular and long absence from the Bible, lack of unity and love in the home front, betrayal of trust and inability to keep basic secrets, broken promises made to the children over and over again, lack of trust between daddy and mommy which can also breeds distrust between children and parents among many can create gaps and distrust in children towards their parents.

Parents careless choice of school for the children is another enemy, as a matter of fact it is the number one enemy of the grace of God upon the children, especially teenagers. Parents sometimes know sound Christian schools around them with proven records of faith and purpose driven academia but pride and prejudice and desire to please ones social status, friends and members of one’s social group has robbed many of spiritual sanity and now someone want to blame strictness to prayer and morning devotion as cause for the perceive distance between parents and children? No, that’s untrue.

Nothing drive a child away from the parents like the kind of friends he/she happened to meet in life. Yes, you can’t guide who they happen to meet in life or the choice of their friends, but you can at least influence their chances of getting good and godly friends through prayers and by your timely examples and by the choice of school you make for them.

If all your friends are fashionable freak, who has no serious love for God and for church, don’t be deceived to think your children will have better ability to chose good and godly friend. Your children are an extension of you and who you are, so are their friends, they are exact mirror of the kind of people that are in your close cycle. You can’t make seductive home movies, sex, violence and betrayal scenes on TV good for all, including children and enjoy watching BB Naija with your children in attendance and still expect them to trust you.

Some smart Christian parents enjoy watching BB Naija in the secret of their room, and think children don’t know, they do. You can’t be enjoying other peoples children making love in the eye of the public for fame and money and vote them on, and with the other hand try to prayer cover for your own children. That’s hypocrisy and deception at its peak! Children knows their limit with words around spiritually unserious parents, they can talk about other things but nothing personal to them will be voice out. Our lifestyles must be exemplarily simple and moderate before we can earn our children trust.

Jesus Christ was not a friend of the world, so the deciples after him too are not, and so are those from the tribe of Christian after them. You can’t be a friend of the world and expect your children to chose better. It dosnt work like that. What a man sow he will reap, I have never seen a parent who genuinely love the Lord and commit his/her children to the same thing who end up with such woes as mentioned in the statement under review. But for those whose commitment is self seeking and whose life and marriage is at variance to lessons learned from morning devotion, I won’t be surprise if that statement prove to be true.

A child we are not close to, we don’t expect serious personal relationship and a life of grace we did not live, we shouldn’t expect our children to live it. Relationship and faith build trust, once one is missing, distrust is inevitable.

• Group Admin, 3pG.